


Spectrophobia

by RinIsDovah



Category: Ao no Exorcist | Blue Exorcist
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Everyone Is Gay, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, I attempt to write drama and fail, Mephisto is an evil bastard, Multi, Not an accurate portrayal of mental illness, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Psychosis, Some people live but Yuri is still dead because I like hurting you, mostly - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-16
Updated: 2020-12-30
Packaged: 2021-03-10 20:34:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,460
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28113216
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RinIsDovah/pseuds/RinIsDovah
Summary: Rin Okumura was never considered normal.But in a world without exorcists, where not even his father believes in what he sees, he becomes a further outlier — they tell him he’s crazy for his visions.He believes them.But once pieces start falling into place, he begins to doubt...—Updates probably every two weeks or so. No promises.
Relationships: it’s a mystery~
Comments: 8
Kudos: 24





	1. Sparks

**Author's Note:**

> Hey! So this is not accurate. I did do research, but for the most part due to the nature of this story, this isn’t gonna be realistic.

“Who’re you callin’ a demon?” 

Rin spits blood onto the black pavement as the trio scrambles for purchase with their cheap shoes, fleeing the alley. The shadows of dusk had begun to crawl across the ground, leaving the remaining slivers of golden rays amongst the darkening streets of the Southern Cross slums.

He lifted his hand, bloody and abused, his fingerless gloves frayed. White wings flicker through the air, graceful and alive but… Is this worth it?

He clenched his fist, causing it to sting viciously against the pressure of his fingers. “...what the hell am I doing?” 

—

Rin didn’t like school much. He didn’t like the people at school much, either.

A can tumbles down the street with some rattling clanks, dented. You can just barely read “Yams” on it, brandless and generic. The colors are long faded.

He never really liked going — people said he was insane, or a demon. Of course, they didn’t know. Not really. He tucks his battered hands deep into his pockets, ignoring the friction of raw skin against denim, and glares at some random brat looking at him like he was some delinquent. (Really, what does it matter? Is it not true anymore?)

He doesn’t live too far — it’s this old, dumb monastery that’s stuck right in the middle of the dumps. They can't afford much better, really, but it means that nobody really goes to the sermons except the homeless. Anyone else nearby is just generally seedy. The only other people that come by are suckers seeking out his old man for “exorcism” (it’s really just glorified counseling, and he knows his dad doesn’t believe in it either).

Shura was waiting for him when he returned — well, for him or a random guy. She’d been big on dating recently, for better or worse. It astounded him how Shiro hadn’t caught her with anyone. Well, she was 19 so it wasn’t like she could be stopped either way.

“Fighting again?” she asked. She had a strand of golden blonde hair wrapped around her index finger absently. Her whole head was covered with a shock of cheaply-dyed-looking red hair, with a somewhat brassy blonde ombre. Weirdly enough, it was natural — it had been like that since Rin could remember, and he doubted she wanted to (or could) pay to maintain it.

“He was shooting pigeons,” he justified instead of answering. “Asshole deserved it anyway.”

Shura raised an eyebrow but didn’t contradict him. “Sounds about right.”

Rin didn’t fight for no reason. He was skewed by most people’s standards, but the kid had a decent sense of justice that just usually ended with some busted lips and band-aids. But Shura couldn’t say she was much better.

Shiro thought differently, mostly out of concern. Rin had a lot of things screwy in his head, and the old man that he was saw it as his job to straighten him out or something. Definitely worked for Shura, she thought, taking a swig of the beer in her hand. That priest really oughta just stop buying the brand she liked.

She thought Rin would turn out alright, but no one really cared much for her opinion. Not really.

She hopped up from her spot on the porch, patting him on the shoulder with a grin. “You’ll be fine. Go get four eyes to fix yer hand.” She squinted. “And nose.”

Rin grumbled. “His name’s Yukio…” he said half heartedly. He wasn’t one to stand for any name calling for his brother, but Shura had been calling Yukio that since they were 7. And as soon as she turned 16 she started calling Rin just ‘kid’, like she wasn’t only 4 years older.

Shura shrugged. “Four-eyed chicken.” Rin opened his mouth, but Shura slapped her hand over his lips. “Get inside, kid. Old man’s waitin’.”

She looked at him somewhat mirthfully. “He’s gonna get sick of yer skippin’ curfew eventually, y’know,” she said, taking her hand away.

“Already has.” He wiped her cooties from his face. (In all honesty, she probably did have cooties.)

He dared venture inside, surprised and pleased to find nobody immediately pointed out his bloodied nose, or the suspicious redness of his hands.

Or so he thought.

“Bad day?” Maruta, one of the clergymen, asked. It may as well have been rhetorical. 

Rin shrugged, discarding his jacket and tossing it to the side. “Is dinner ready yet?”

“Well… yes, but you should wash your hands and face, Rin. Before Father Fujimoto sees you.”

Begrudgingly, he decided that would be for the best. The bathroom was small, and there were spots of mold on the ceiling nobody had yet endeavored to clean. Above the sink was an open wall. Lines of ruddy rust trailing from four holes. 

There were no mirrors in the house, and the bathroom was no exception.

Plumes of blue tendrils, smooth and ethereal, danced in his mind’s eye.

Perhaps it would be an issue if he were a girl or liked make-up or something, but for Rin (especially for Rin) it wasn’t much of one.

He wished there were no mirrors at all.

——

“Curry again?”

“Curry is cheap and delicious!” Shiro declared. “And convenient.”

“Or you’re a cheap old fart. I could’ve cooked tonight!” He stabbed a chunk of solid potato, sticking it in his mouth with a crunch.

“Rin, you were late home again. We eat at 6:00 each night.” The priest shook his head. “I heard tonight you took a trip to the job center. Well? How’d it go?”

“You can probably guess,” Rin admitted, kicking his feet once or twice under his seat. It creaked as his weight shifted. 

Yukio looked at him knowingly. “You’re hurt. You get into another fight?”

Father Fujimoto chucked a pair of chopsticks at him, shouting, “Rin! Why are you so hot headed?” 

“Think before you resort to violence,” he said just as the chopsticks found the side of Rin’s face.

“Says you, old fart…” he muttered, tossing them to the floor with his head rested on his hand.

A small flyer found its way to Rin’s side of the table, neon green. It looked like it was printed on green construction paper in lieu of printer paper with colored ink.

“A friend of mine needs help with his restaurant,” Shiro explained. “There’s an interview available.”

Rin scowled, chewing a dried chunk of some type of bird. Chicken, presumably. “You know I can’t take that. It’s too… respectable. I’ll lose it in days,” he grumped.

“With that attitude…” The priest heaved a weathered sigh. “Rin, you know it’s my responsibility to raise you to be a responsible member of society. And with your record, you can’t be picky.”

Though, anyone that saw his address would be loathe to even consider him. 

“You’re gonna have to strike out on your own. I can’t do this foreve-“

“I know!” Rin snarled, slamming his arm on the table. 

The heater cracked, denting with unseen heat.

“I just had that fixed last week!” Shiro complained.

“You have a visitor!” one of the clergy announced from the doorway. 

Shiro shook his head. “I’ll be there. Yukio, look after your brother.”

—

“I’m worried about him,” Shiro admitted. A cigarette dangled from his lips as he spoke. 

Mephisto looked at him slyly with green eyes. Johann Faust, or rather, “Mephisto” to those close to him, was an odd man. Firstly, he had his friends call him Mephisto, and then… well, you could name many things that set him apart to… normal members of society.

A pristine white top hat adorned his purple head of hair that had to be dyed. He claimed it was natural, but if that was true, well- Shiro would give up smoking, and for good this time. Then again… he thought of his daughter, who had scarlet and yellow hair naturally.

Maybe everyone connected to him was doomed to be weird as all fuck. He wouldn’t put it past himself.

“You could take up my offer,” he reminded. 

“I want him to learn on his own.” He sighed brokenly. “Life’s a bitch, and I don’t think he gets that yet.”

He blew a plume of smoke from the side of his lips.

“Rin-kun knows that lesson well,” he purred, leaning precariously upon his pink umbrella. Shiro rolled his eyes, but still considered his words. (Impossible to be with in public.) Mephisto tapped his fingers on the gaudy handle. “Especially with his visions, wouldn’t you agree they make things quite… arduous?”

“Sure, sure. His life is hard already.” He plucked the cigarette from his mouth. Mephisto really shouldn’t call them visions, they weren’t just things he saw. They were hallucinations, plain and simple. “But eventually he’ll make it on his own. He has to.” He looked into his companion’s eerie jade eyes. “Without your help.”

“Hm, well, if you say so, pal.”

“Pal?” The priest looked at him bemusedly. 

Johann Faust looked at him with that look, the one that seemed to cage a thousand secrets. Shiro sighed. Where did he find these people?

Smoke rises into the crisp night air.

Mephisto leaves an envelope on the weathered mahogany wood.


	2. Reflection

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Imagine alternating chapters and then immediately realizing you have no idea what to do with past arcs

The scuffs on his knuckles stung.

Blue eyes stared back at him, the edges of his shoulders warped with flames he couldn’t feel. He traced the sleeve of his shirt with his palm, the fabric biting at the layers of scrapes and scabs. His reflection followed. He felt nothing, but in the mirror his hand caught, consumed by the sparks that erupt into angry patches of cerulean wrongness.

They called him a demon. 

There was a demon in the mirror, and it stared back as if equally as upset by Rin’s visage as he wasby its. It’s caged by a long, black frame that contains the wrong world.

Warmth presses his shoulders, solid almost as if weighed by mass. He’s seconds away from breakdown — it’s the flames, he thinks, until he sees a hand reaching calmly through the fire, twisted and ambiguated by the flame. His father is looking down at him from the reflection. 

A priest meets his gaze, concerned. He looks him over briefly. There’s no new injuries, and even so none of the old ones are bad enough to cause Rin to panic like this. 

“Dad?” Rin hiccups, young and fragile. How he got into so many fights, Shiro would never know. 

Rin looked down at his hands and saw nothing but pale skin and raw patches, irritated from their abuse. He seemed confused, staring down like something was missing.

With a glance back at the mirror, and back at his son, Shiro raised an eyebrow. Rin continued inspecting — hands, arms, feet, and all the while constantly touching his shoulder.

“Rin,” Shiro finally said, snatching his hands out of his line of sight with his larger, calloused ones. The boy met his eyes reluctantly. “What’s wrong?” he asked softly, belying the impatience and confusion beneath his tone. 

He looked at the mirror. A demon stared back. His nose wrinkled, red building upon his cheeks. Shiro’s hands were clutched in his own until they turned white, and he screamed. 

—

Shiro inspected his hand as he sat outside where the psychologist was evaluating his son. Occasionally they would ask him questions on his and Rin’s family history, a lot of which was unknown. They stopped asking about him once he told them Rin was adopted.

Yuri had been an orphan, raised by her family in the slums for a long while before they had all died or vanished.

What she had remembered of them she had been reluctant to share, typically prattling and babbling on in an easygoing manner he had loved in her.

He told him what she had told Shiro, which wasn’t much. But the man seemed to find it to be enough, and had vanished back behind closed doors.

What was Rin seeing that Shiro wasn’t? 

Yuri lifts her finger, lowering it to just beneath her bespectacled gaze as she cooed at the air. “Look!” she had said, showing him a particularly adorable wad of empty air. Shiro frowned and she only laughed good-naturedly, apparently seeing something he never had and never would.

Was Rin like her? Was he seeing what she was seeing? 

She was a schizophrenic, not that she had ever agreed with the diagnosis, but had Rin inherited that? 

He hadn’t even known it was something that could be passed on. 

”I’m not crazy, you know. Obaba saw them too.”

”Obaba.... the ‘crazy’ one?”

”Only as crazy as I am.”

He hadn’t seen past her strangeness, detesting her for it until the end. And now Rin might be like her. 

But maybe not. She was peaceful. Whatever she dreamed of in her head, it was pleasant. 

Rin? He could only remember the stark terror. It could be any number of problems, or nothing at all — day dream gone wrong (were they that vivid?), concussion from that fight, or, god forbid, drugs. Or narcolepsy… that kid slept a lot during the day.

He wouldn’t know until he was told, most likely.

The man came back out, Rin in tow, looking miffed. Shiro looked at him, and he looked away just as quickly. 

—

Rin and Shiro sat on plush ivory and grey chairs adjacent to the psychologist, who sat on a more simple swivel chair not far from a laptop on a false-stone countertop. Shiro couldn’t say what it was really made of.

The walls were an almost-pink off-white, and various posters of children’s characters (they were probably supposed to be calming, but missed the mark) lined the walls. Rin ignored them with a huff.

“We have an idea of what it is,” he said. The psychologist’s bald head shined, as if waxed and polished meticulously. The only hair he had was on his chin, a patch of thin scruff tracing his jaw, salt and pepper as if he were aging.

He had crow’s feet around his eye and a thin wrinkle on the left side of his mouth, but was otherwise remarkably smoothed for a man his age. He seemed perhaps the same age as Shiro.

“Psychosis.” The side of his lip quirked firmly beneath a fold on his cheek, and he could see how he got that wrinkle there. But he wasn’t smiling.

Rin frowned, brow furrowed tightly. “I’m not a psycho.” Psychos weren’t far off from demons in his mind.

“That’s not what it means, Okumura-kun. Psychosis is a number of things, but it’s not psychopathy.” The doctor couldn’t find it within himself to scold a five year old on whatever preconceptions he had on psychopaths and serial killers, so he took out a packet from behind him. He glanced at it quickly to ensure it was the correct one before offering it to Shiro. Rin took it instead, eagerly, if only out of curiosity. 

He didn’t understand much of it, the majority having been written in excessively long words he hadn’t been taught. Not that he had really retained much of what he had been taught, anyway. 

Shiro took the paper from his hands gently, scanning the many paragraphs and explanations before thumbing through the rest of the pages intently. 

“Like I said, we have an idea, but it’s not definitive,” he said, pulling the priest from his reading. “I have some questions.”

Shiro gave him a look that allowed him to continue, Rin kicking the soft and plush chair with the backs of his feet.

“Has he experienced a drop in grades or performance at school?” He looked at Rin and  
rephrased his words. “Has he had a more difficult time completing work and focusing?”

“He’s never done particularly well in school. He has a hard time reading, and he’s never focused well. But that’s just Rin.”

Rin seemed to shrivel in his seat, kicking with yet more fervance. He looked off to the side, not paying much attention.

“Not necessarily… it’s frankly unsurprising with how young he is. The signs must’ve begun showing up along with his personality. Has there been any recent trauma? Physical or otherwise?” He eyed the purple-y green bruise in full bloom on the side of his face.

Rin traced the material of the fabric with his thumb nail.

“He got into a… fight,” he said, refusing after a moment to soften it into ‘scuffle’. “With a classmate.” Really, it had been one of the older kids. Rin had gotten into a fight with his little brother the prior week. He called in Rin’s most recent enemy. Rin had instigated the entire thing according to his teacher, which Shiro doubted.

The doctor hummed, looking with narrowed eyes at the boy across from him. Instead of kicking, now he was pushing his heels as far under the cushion as his ankles would allow. 

“With the symptoms he’s showing, it’s almost definitely psychosis. But the early onset and hallucinations are both strange. It typically develops in young adulthood, maybe late high school years. It’s incredibly rare for it to begin at this age.”

The page he was holding (that Shiro had painstakingly filled out an hour prior) had a loosely scribbled ‘5’ where the blank for age was.

Almost 13 years before earliest typical onset.

“Not only this,” he notes, “but psychosis is typically a symptom rather than an end-all diagnosis. With no other symptoms I can't say if this is a bigger part of a whole, or perhaps genetic. Regardless, I will be scheduling him to return for another evaluation, likely in 3 months or so.”

He and the doctor exchanged goodbyes, and he returned to the monastery. 

—

It was a typical Catholic monastery, not far from the Southern Cross slums. It was all they could afford as a group, and despite the shady people that lurked around, they each did their best to protect the twins from the unsavory folks that loitered nearby. It was mainly drug-dealers, anyhow, and they had no interest in five year olds who couldn’t pay. That, and some homeless people that tended to hang around for lack of a better place to be.

Yukio was on the steps with Maruta, nearly tripping in his attempt to get to his brother. 

He was smaller than Rin, but his skin had a bit more color to it, Rin’s lost in a milky pallor that made him look far more delicate than he really was. Shiro suspected that boy could lift as much as he could.

He had three moles: one beneath his eye, one on his cheek, and another on his chin. There were at least a dozen more scattered on his back, but nobody besides Rin and Shiro needed to know. 

Maruta approached in a far more calm manner, face set grimly, and Shiro led them inside, sending the twins off to their rooms.

Rin collapsed face first onto his bunk (the top bunk, he wouldn’t have it any other way), cocooning himself in the thick, fuzzy blanket he had gotten for his birthday and Christmas last year. Even through the cloth, fuzz, and walls, he could still hear the murmur of Dad and the clergy.

Yukio poked his head over the ladder, doe-eyed. “Did you go to the doctor?”

“I went to a psycho,” Rin murmured.

“Psychologist,” Yukio corrected tentatively. Rin grumbled and flipped over to face the wall, blanket following with him. With the silence, he followed up with, “What’d he say?” 

“I have psychosis.” He said it right for the first time.

Yukio, for all the interest he had shown on the medical field, was about as poorly versed in it as any 5 year old, and psychology was perhaps something he was even less proficient in.

“Oh,” he said. He didn’t add much else.

Rin glanced over his shoulder to look at his brother. “S’that bad?”

Yukio didn’t say anything, looking at his brother, who looked gloomier than he’d ever remembered seeing him. In the end, he could only shrug, which left Rin facing away from him again. 

No amount of poking and prodding seemed to get his attention, so Yukio climbed down carefully, sitting at his desk. It had a chair with longer legs so he could reach the small book on top of it — a book Dad had technically gotten them both around a week ago. Rin didn’t like reading much, but Yukio had taken to it fast and had read the book a couple times through by himself now.

He opened it and began reading it once more, looking up towards the top bunk where Rin lay hidden. 

Rin curled up more under his blanket. His scrapes burned, and he couldn’t think about the demon, focusing on the pain. 

They said he was a demon, and the mirror told him too.


End file.
